


Perturbation

by Unsentimentalf



Series: Aggravation [2]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-08 10:26:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3205847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On reflection, last night wasn't really his sort of thing at all.  So if Tarrant has any sense he'll let the whole thing alone. But then common sense has never really been his strong point...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Morning After

Del Tarrant liked to think that he was a man of the world, a tough guy, that he knew about violence. But in truth he only knew about fighting. He understood enough of how Federation justice operated and the history of Liberator's crew to know that unlike him Kerr Avon was likely no stranger to the sort of violence where you didn't get to do any fighting back.

He thought about that, lying sleepless in his bunk that night. The med unit took away the pain and the physical damage but it left the memories brutally intact. Tarrant had been in enough brawls in his time to shake off bruises and even broken bones without much thought beyond "you should see the other guy". This time he hadn't laid a finger on the other guy and maybe that had been what made it different.

He didn't like it. He was sure about that much. There were people who got off on being hurt and helpless but he wasn't one. The getting off had been about something else entirely. He wasn't sure what to think about that so he thought about violence and Kerr Avon instead, who undoubtedly did get off on it, on causing pain, on hurting, on hurting him in particular. He wondered if the computer genius had known about violence before they gave him to some professional interrogator. He wondered if that first time had come as the same sort of surprise to Avon as it had to him.

Tarrant was not generally prone to philosophising. Life was too short for ruminating. He'd picked a dangerous career and one day someone would likely kill him. Chances were Kerr Avon won't be the one to do it; not unless they fell out far more that they had to date. Avon wasn’t a serious threat, not that kind. The man would even stop when he was told to for reasons that Tarrant didn’t entirely understand. Tarrant was pretty sure that his own self control wouldn't be that good.

He'd wanted to show the coolness was merely a veneer. He'd wanted to get Avon hot and sweating, profane and needy and out of control, the way men get when they fuck. Like him. He'd been sure that buried underneath the sarcasm and the control was a man a great deal like himself, if he could just get past that pretence of superiority and that when he got there they could deal and have some fun at the same time.

Tarrant snorted at himself. That bit didn't go quite according to plan. Avon came across even less human in bed than he was outside it. It turned out that Avon liked blood and handcuffs and listening to him hurting badly while he got fucked. Tarrant liked sex to be physical, uncomplicated and as mutually enjoyable as he and his partner, or partners, could make it. They were, quite obviously, totally incompatible. No need to fall out over it, Avon wouldn't think any less of him for not wanting to do that again. Probably the opposite in fact. There was nothing impressive about volunteering to get sliced up for someone else's kicks.

He turned over in bed, tugged the cover up to his shoulders. That was one decision made. He listened to the quiet hum of the alien ship taking them unimaginable distances through empty space and eventually he slept.

* * * * * *

The next morning his good and sensible resolution got blown out of existence because when he walked into the galley Avon was scowling at his coffee and Tarrant realised that all he wanted right now was for Kerr Avon to be looking at him. Scowling or otherwise, he really didn’t care.

It took him a little while to process this realisation and by the time he was done Avon had looked up of his own accord. He was still looking grim and for a moment Tarrant remembered pain and doubted his own desires yet again.

"Is that coffee hot? "

"It's hot, but it's not what I'd call coffee." Avon pushed the pot towards him. "You're welcome to it."

"Thanks. "

Tarrant was usually good at post coital chat, but he had to concede that that was a fairly lousy attempt at conversation. He was not sure what he really wanted to say. He felt a sudden, perfectly explicable, perfectly impossible urge to simply kiss the man, knowing that nothing that has happened between them suggested that would be acceptable.

He had to say something, now, before the others come in. "So. We didn't get a chance to talk yesterday."

"I thought you chattered far more than necessary."

"Not afterwards. You said nothing at all as I recall, and I had an urgent appointment elsewhere. Now I'd like to know where we stand."

Avon shrugged indifference and returned his gaze to his ersatz coffee. Tarrant waited for a few seconds. "Pretend it never happened? I thought you were braver than that, Avon."

"I don't pretend anything. I just don't place any importance on it. I'm surprised that you want to. If you want romance, go back to Dayna. "

Tarrant couldn’t talk to Dayna until he knew where he stood with Avon. Nothing the man had said yet was a definite no or yes to future entanglement. For that matter, nothing he had said himself had been definite either. This was far more awkward than it had any right to be. 

Avon sighed into the silence. "Very well. We will have your discussion. How many of your bones are you prepared to have me break next time, should there be a next time?"

"None." Tarrant said definitely. "Not a chance. But... "

"I thought as much. That's the end to that conversation. Who are you taking down to Taglia with you?"

That seemed a little perfunctory, even for Avon. "Is that all it's about for you? Breaking bones?"

"In your case, yes. Can we please move on to actual business? We'll reach Taglia in three hours. I would find it reassuring to think that you had some sort of plan in mind."

Tarrant very much wanted to say something equally cutting in response but he didn’t want to lie outright. He could pretend that Avon meant no more to him than he apparently did to the other man but he'd always been rather proud of the fact that he didn’t play those kinds of games when it came to affairs. If he wanted someone he let them know, politely, of course. He was seldom turned down.

He'd never been stupid enough to fall for someone like Kerr Avon before, of course. Possibly because he’d never met anyone like Kerr Avon. He was going to have to rethink his whole approach, but for now he let the first part of Avon's words pass.

"It would be best if you came down with me. I'd like a sharp observer and a fast back up if there's trouble. "

"I thought we were visiting your friends?"

Tarrant shook his head. "Not exactly. I knew Yestin - the new President - from the Academy. He was a spoilt rich kid then with more sense of entitlement than talent. Not precisely a friend. I knocked several of his teeth out once, in fact. But they are standing against the Federation now, they do need our services and they will pay."

"Wonderful," Avon said. "There’s nothing as irrational as a teenage feud. I ought to just leave you to it."

"But you'll come." Tarrant said confidently.

"The mess you could make of this without me doesn't bear thinking about. What, precisely do you intend to offer them? "

By the time the others had joined them they were in the middle of the familiar and relatively impersonal process of honing of plans.

"This is a friendly visit," Tarrant finally summed up for the benefit of all of them. "We're here by invitation. But the planets have just had a fairly violent change of regime. The situation could be volatile. Liberator needs to be ready to pick us up and get out of here at very short notice. Any questions?"

"Just one." Vila said. "What's wrong with Avon's hands?"

Avon glanced down, puzzled. "Nothing at all. Why?"

"Because Tarrant keeps looking at them."

"You're imagining it," Tarrant said sharply. "Any relevant questions?"

Vila shrugged. "I thought that might be relevant. You look as if you expect him to produce a bunch of coloured handkerchiefs and a dove from them at any moment."

"You'd make a poor poker player, Tarrant." Avon was apparently amused.

"So you keep telling me. Right, chaps. Avon's not particularly fascinating appendages aside, are we ready to go? "

"You're not going to tell us what's going on then." Vila grumbled. "I hate that."

"You’ll have to live with it." Avon was dismissive. "Time to go."

* * * *

"Why hands in particular? "

Tarrant glanced around the brightly lit and lavishly gilded room, empty of other people but with refreshments laid out neatly. They were waiting to be ushered into the president's presence, had already waited a considerable time in silence. The man who had brought them this far had warned that there might be a long delay.

"You want to talk about this here? "

"We're not currently under surveillance. I don't know of any other pressing subjects for discussion. Why hands?"

Tarrant aimed for dismissive and unconcerned, "Vila was imagining things. You know that he'’s hardly a reliable source."

"Vila is frequently fanciful , but not about his own trade. Good thieves take careful note of what their targets are paying attention to. If he says you were watching my hands, that's what you were doing. I'd like to know why."

"Whatever Vila may suggest, I wasn't actually doing it, so I'm unlikely to be able to give you an explanation." 

Avon smiled at him. “Maybe I can hazard a guess, then.” He held up both hands in the space between them, palms towards Tarrant. “You think that you don’t like being hurt, but you’re fascinated by the way it happened, nonetheless. You’re still imagining what damage these hands could do.”

Tarrant half turned away, reluctant to be caught with his eyes on the long fingers. “Very imaginative.”

“Oh, I think not just imagination.” Avon’s smile had turned cruel. “Go on, take a good look, Tarrant.”

Sod him. Two could play at this game. Tarrant’s hand came up to grab Avon’s right wrist and he bent forward, keeping the man’s gaze. As his teeth grazed the tip of the forefinger he could feel Avon hold himself motionless.

Tarrant ran his tongue over the fingertip then closed his mouth over it. Avon's skin tasted slightly sweet, smooth and very clean. Slowly he worked his way down the finger, licking, nipping, sucking. Avon’s expression stayed determinedly blank until Tarrant swirled his tongue around the centre of his palm. Then he felt a very definite shudder.

It was enough. He pulled back, smiling. “Not just broken bones, then?”

“How often do you need to be warned?” Avon hissed at him.

“I hardly think I need warning.” He was heady with the success of his manoeuvre. Avon had responded... “I have a safe word, remember? Two, in fact.”

“I don’t for one instant forget that.” Avon wiped his hand dry on the rich chair covering. “I suggest you pull yourself together. That was a knock on the door.”

If either of them were still in a state of disarray the woman who ushered them in to see President Donner Yestin didn’t seem to notice. Yestin was wearing some form of local uniform. He’d put on a little weight and a great number of florid decorations, and his teeth were impeccably straight. His glance passed over Tarrant as they approached, didn't linger.

“Kerr Avon. The intrepid revolutionary. What a pleasure to meet you. We are hugely grateful that you’ve put the fabled Liberator at our disposal.” Yestin stood up from behind the ridiculously large desk to shake hands.

“I wasn’t aware that I had.” Avon took the offered hand with no great show of enthusiasm. Tarrant wondered if Avon’s was still damp.

Yestin winced theatrically. “Oh dear. Did Del overstep his authority with that offer? You ought to cut him some slack, Avon. He used to be a hotshot pilot, you know, at least if his test scores were anything to go by, and that probably makes up for any minor disciplinary issues, don’t you think?” His smile was wide and insincere. “Really, you’ve hired a great pilot, there. Just lock up the silver and he’ll be fine.”

Oh yes. The memory of just why Tarrant had thumped the guy’s teeth out was flooding back.

“He ought to be rather better than fine for the amount I'm paying him. But thank you for the advice,” Avon said. “I’ll be sure to bear it in mind.

Tarrant just caught himself before a protest could emerge. He had no idea why Avon should pretend to be in control of the Liberator but they had agreed before teleporting down here that their differences would be best carefully hidden from the outside world. Jumping in to contradict Avon wouldn't achieve anything. Besides, what did it matter what Yestin thought?

Avon launched into what was near enough Tarrant's prepared negotiating spiel. Tarrant was glad enough to be spared the necessity of talking to Yestin himself. Since he was clearly intended to appear surplus to negotiating requirements and he needed something to distract him from the sound of Avon's low voice and his own rather wayward thoughts he wandered around the room, looking at the flotsam that the new president had chosen to surround himself with while still keeping an ear on the conversation.

It was the sort of self aggrandising trash he would have expected. Cups and medals for sports Tarrant had never heard of, presumably local system. Yestin's graduation certificate from the flight academy, gold framed. The horns and skin of something that could only be a hunting trophy. Tarrant wrinkled his nose in distaste. Why on earth had the revolutionary Taglians picked this particular president? Family connections, maybe. Both Yestin’s mothers were people of wealth and importance in his home system, or so the man had always claimed.

He drifted over to the broad windowsill behind Avon to examine a crystalline sphere about twenty centimetres across that appeared to be acting as a paperweight. It was pale orange with delicate traces of black web shot through it and the first thing he'd seen in the room that he'd liked. He reached out without conscious thought, though he’d carefully kept his hands away from everything else he’d looked at. It was ice cold and the orange clouds within it swirled at his touch.

There was a sudden silence. Tarrant looked up to see Yestin looking past Avon at him. He pulled his hand away and moved away from the window. Avon glanced round at him, then back to the president.

"I think that's enough," Avon said abruptly. “Send us a list of the supplies you need, and your proposals for suppliers if you have any. Our transport fee will be twenty percent of the gross value, payable 75 percent in advance, in precious metal. We are available for six standard days, subject to Federation ship movements. If the Federation arrive we will do our best to deliver anything already on Liberator before we leave but I'm not promising anything. My ship's safety is my first consideration."

“Six days isn't nearly enough,” Yestin protested. “And twenty percent is piracy!”

“I don't stay anywhere longer than six days. There's a price on my head and too many people interested in collecting. Liberator is ten times as fast as any normal freighter and our cargo holds are substantial. If you source your goods from local star systems you should have no trouble resupplying. We will be taking considerable risks in your behalf. Our terms are as stated. Take them or leave them.”

Yestin scowled at Avon. “I will have to consult with my council.”

Avon shrugged. “The six days run from when we arrived in the system, three standard hours ago. Send a message to the ship within two hours with your decision. If we don't have a contract at that point, we leave.”

“To the ship? But you'll stay here as our guests, of course? I have arranged for accommodation, and you'll dine with me tonight.”

“Sorry,” Avon said, without even a pretence of disappointment. “I'm needed on Liberator.”

“But you'll leave me Del? It’s been so long since we saw each other. I absolutely insist that we at least have a little time to renew old acquaintance. I am so delighted to see him again, after all this time. Dinner, at the very least. I really do absolutely insist."

Tarrant nodded assent at Avon from behind Yestin's back. It wasn't a particularly appealing prospect but the man doubtless just wanted to show off to an outside audience. Good food, good wine and excruciatingly bad conversation-he could take that for the team. Itm would probably give him a story or two to amuse the others with later. Also he might get another chance to look at that paperweight.

“No.” Avon said, bluntly. “I need him on the ship too.”

Tarrant couldn't think of any reason why Avon should. If they needed to pull out in a hurry he could teleport up in seconds. It was his neck being risked down here, not that there seemed to be a risk. Their comings and goings on planets had never been the sort of decision that anyone got to make for the rest of them and he wasn't happy that Avon was trying it now. This control freakery was too reminiscent of certain other recent behaviours for his liking.

"I'm sure that I can persuade the Captain to let me come down again later,” he told Yestin. “What time's dinner?”

Yestin perked up immediately. “Fourteen and a half, local time. People normally dress up a little but everyone will make allowances, I'm sure...” His expression suggested that a lowly pilot's wardrobe might not be able to stretch to dressing up for dinner.

“I'll see what I can do,” Tarrant said cheerfully. “Until later, then.” He motioned at Avon, who was not looking particularly happy. “Shall we go?”

Avon spoke briefly into the communicator and they were back on the ship.

“I thought that went quite well,” Tarrant said. “You've clearly missed your vocation as a haulage contractor, Avon.”

“Why did you say you'd go back?” Avon's voice was sharp.

“Haven’t you ever heard about keeping the customer satisfied? It’s dinner, that’s all. Funny, I didn’t have you pegged as the jealous type.”

Avon shook his head. “Don’t be more imbecilic than necessary. There’s something wrong with this whole set up. That man’s no revolutionary.”

“Yestin? God, no. Establishment to the core. But he’s an opportunist where power is concerned. The way I read it the Taglians were ready to rebel and he just jumped on board.”

Avon looked unconvinced. “You ought not to go down there again on your own.”

It was all part of the same thing, Tarrant thought. Avon had to be the one in control. He wasn't playing that game any more. "That’s my decision, Avon. Not yours. You’ve got anything concrete I need to know, tell me. Otherwise shut up."

Avon kept his gaze for a few seconds then shrugged. "Nothing concrete, no. You still ought to listen to me."

"No." Tarrant had had enough of Avon's high handedness. Last time he'd gone along with Avon's way of doing things he'd got badly hurt. He'd dealt with all sorts of tricky situations for years on his own before he'd joined Liberator's crew; he didn’t need the man’s help. "You know what? I'll handle this just fine without you. You can brief the others since you decided to be in charge of negotiations. Let me know when the contract comes through. I'll be in my quarters, getting ready to go out for dinner."

* * * * * * * * *

Tarrant described the sphere to Zen but the ship's computer didn't recognise the material. That was a little strange but maybe the black streaks had been added artificially for effect. Orac might be more help but Avon was using it to identify likely suppliers for the Taglian requirements; a long list and the formal contract had arrived just before the two hour cut off. Besides, asking Orac was effectively the same as asking Avon, and Tarrant was reluctant to mention something so trivial to him.

There was a knock on his door, shortly before he was due to teleport back down. He pulled it open and smiled.

“Zen, time to local fourteen and a half?”

_Twenty three standard minutes._

“You're cutting it a bit fine, aren't you, Avon? In my world hot make-up sex takes a little longer than twenty three minutes, especially since I'll have to dress again afterwards.”

“You can't wear _that_ tonight,” Avon said.

“Why not? It went down well enough yesterday. I thought you weren’t being jealous?”

“Don't be ridiculous.” Avon pushed past him, sat down on the bed. “You don't know what you're getting yourself in for.”

“That's what you said yesterday, too. Then you tied me up and punched me a lot. I find it hard to believe, Kerr Avon, that you always have my best interests at heart. If I can survive your idea of intimacy I can doubtless manage a formal dinner with the President of the Taglian Confederacy without coming to any harm."

He closed the door, walked back to look down at Avon. He could see the man drag his eyes away from the chest hair bared by the low cut tunic. Avon was, undoubtedly, as affected by yesterday's session as he was. Everything pointed to it. So why wouldn't the man just admit it? "There are a number of things you could say to me right now that I would be extremely interested in. ‘I know better than you’ isn't one of them."

Avon's hands slid under the hem of the tunic, duplicate to the one he'd torn yesterday, tightened across the leather on his hips. "Take these off."

"See? You can be utterly fascinating, if you try." Tarrant pulled the red satin over his head, tugged the tight leather down and stepped out of it, naked. Avon's hands returned, this time to bare skin, and Tarrant’s erection rose and hardened, tantalisingly close to those unsmiling lips. Fuck Yestin. Dinner could wait. Everything could wait. He reached out to cup the side of the man's face, fingers running across the slightest trace of stubble, the tense chin. So much better than being tied up.

“Now perhaps you'll listen to me.” A hand moved to cup Tarrant’s tight balls and he gasped, just a little. “I’m certain that Yestin's lying to us.”

“For God's sake!” Tarrant couldn’t quite believe this. The manipulative bastard ... “Not one more damn word about Yestin or Taglia or I'll throw you out. I mean it!”

Avon's hand squeezed a little. The sensation was interesting if rather worrying. “You're not in a position to do anything much right now. So shut up and listen.”

“No.” He wasn't doing this again. Avon could bloody well behave. “Roj Blake. Now why don't you let go before you get a knee in the face? ”

Avon opened his fingers and sat back, frustration clear on his face. “I'm just getting you to listen.”

“No you're not.” Tarrant told him. “I'm not listening. I've told you I'll handle it without you. So stop being such a control freak. I can't go to this bloody dinner now till we're done here anyway, can I?”

“We are done here.” Avon shoved him back a space and stood up. "I was attempting to do you a favour. Next time I won't bother. Don't let anyone take your bracelet off tonight, whatever else you end up letting them do."

"Avon! Wait!" Tarrant called after him but he didn't pause. Tarrant was left standing naked as the door slid closed.


	2. Complications, Minimal and Otherwise

Liberator's pilot was in a lousy mood as he strode towards the teleport. Avon had walked out on him. Walked out! And he was committed to a stupid formal meal with a man he thoroughly disliked, which would have been bad enough, but he also had to bear Avon’s probably not unreasonable suspicions in mind. He was tempted to call the whole thing off, except that he’d rather kiss a rattlesnake tonight than admit that Kerr bloody Avon was right.

Vila was at the teleport controls. That didn’t improve his mood any. If he did need pulling out in a hurry he’d rather have someone reliable. Vila seemed taken by his clothes.

“They didn’t say it was that sort of party! Can I come?”

“Why not?” Vila wouldn’t have been Tarrant’s first choice for company but a familiar face would dilute the Taglians a little. Avon had said ‘don’t go alone’, after all. Tarrant was pretty sure that Avon wouldn’t approve, nonetheless, which was another good reason for taking Vila. But mostly it meant that someone competent would have to man the teleport instead.

“Great! Give me five minutes to get changed.” Vila rushed off towards his quarters.

Tarrant put a call up to the flight deck. “I need teleport operation, five minutes, and someone to watch it while we’re on the planet.”

“We?” That was Cally’s voice. “What’s going on?”

“Vila’s coming down with me as well. Get someone down here, will you?” He nearly said “not Avon” but that would have raised too many questions and likely done no good anyway.

Sure enough it was Avon who strode into the teleport room, glowering. “”What are you playing at now?”

“Vila fancied a night out too. It’s not my job to tell him what he can and can’t do. Or yours.”

Avon kept his gaze for a moment then turned to the teleport console. “He’d better hurry up if you don’t want to offend your host.”

“That’s it? Doesn’t he get the dire warning routine as well?”

“I doubt if he needs it. Vila is a great deal smarter than you in some ways.” Avon glanced round at the sound of footsteps in the corridor. “He, for instance, doesn’t need reminding not to give up his bracelet for any reason. Do you, Vila?”

“Certainly not.” Vila was wearing mainly sequins. Tarrant wondered if that constituted dressing for dinner on Taglia. He rather hoped not. “I’m not stupid, you know. Which is why I’m not mouldering around up here when there’s a party to go to.” He skipped over to the teleport. “Let’s go!”

"Don't leave the teleport unattended, "Tarrant reminded Avon.

"I wasn't intending to. Someone has to get you out of trouble."

"Well, if you get bored sitting there you can always amuse yourself thinking about some of the things you could have been doing this evening instead, if you weren’t such a pillock. Ready to teleport down."

The last things he focused on were Avon's fingers, pushing the sliders smoothly and competently. Then they were in the shining presidential palace and Yestin himself was hurrying over, his own slightly pudgy hands outstretched in greeting.

Dinner was not, as Tarrant had expected, in a formal dining hall. Instead they were whisked off by flyer into the city and to a private nightclub. There were dancers of both sexes, wearing very little and gyrating to beat heavy music, and gaming tables that made Villa's eyes light up but only for a moment. "I haven't brought any money!"

"No need to worry. Chips for our guests, please!"

Tarrant took a brief look inside the purse he was handed but decided that he really didn't want to gamble on Yestin's tables. "Here. Have mine as well." he said to his companion. This was looking suspiciously like some sort of honey trap and he was fairly sure that Vila wasn't its target. Maybe Yestin was trying to discredit him with his employer. That would be rather funny, really. Still, he would keep away from the obvious sources of trouble.

"You don't gamble any more?" Yestin said cheerfully. "I seem to remember you were quite the wild boy at the Academy. I suppose you have your position to consider now." He seemed not enough put out for that to have been the trap.

The food was good, the alcohol liberal and rather fine. No one seemed worried about Vila gatecrashing. The glittering thief had acquired a couple of pretty female dancers on each arm and a never ending supply of cocktails: despite the distractions he seemed to be winning a good pile of additional chips. The other guests seemed to be young and Tarrant judged that most of them fell somewhere between bodyguard, playboy or girl and thug. No politicians were in evidence. No one appeared to be armed, though presumably there were guards somewhere between the president and the street outside.

Tarrant had a couple of cocktails, switched to soft drinks. No-one commented. So that wasn't the trap either. His bracelet was snug against his wrist; he called in every half hour as arranged and Avon's chill yet reassuring voice acknowledged without comment. It all seemed to be a bit of a damp squib after Avon's ridiculous scaremongering. Vila was having fun and Tarrant was staying clear of trouble.

As he watched Vila pulling in yet another pile of red chits Yestin came to stand at his shoulder. “Your friend has the right idea. A man in your position can’t afford to pass up on handouts out of pride.”

“My position is rather better than you seem to imagine.” Tarrant was irritated by the constant sniping.

“Really? Getaway driver for a crook? It’s a bit of a come down for the Academy’s darling. What are you going to do for back pay when he gets sent back to prison?”

“The prospect doesn’t keep me awake at night,” Tarrant said. “We keep ahead of the Federation easily enough. Avon…”

“Oh yes, Kerr Avon!” Yestin sneered. “That man’s notorious for only one thing.”

“And what might that be?” Tarrant had tensed. Surely Avon had kept his secrets better than that?

“Failure, of course.”

Tarrant snorted. “He’s got the fastest ship in the galaxy.”

“And he hires it out to carry whiskey and machine parts. The Federation must be quaking in their boots to see the great revolutionary heroes at work.”

This was hardly the way to talk about someone about to save your economy. Tarrant was starting to wonder if Yestin was drunk or drugged. “The Federation doesn’t know we are here.”

“Of course not.” Yestin turned away, towards a small table that hadn't been lit before, and on it-Tarrant stared at it with a shock of recognition- the orange sphere, or another like it. He felt the same odd pull towards it as he’d felt in the office.

“Isn't that made of the same stuff as your paperweight?” he said to Yestin, with an air that he hoped sounded like innocence.

“Paperweight?” Yestin laughed. “Have you never seen a compulsion sphere before?”

“I’ve never even heard of one,” Tarrant said, honestly this time. “What does it compel?”

Yestin raised his voice and the music quietened. “A demonstration for our guests.”

There was quick conversation between a group of the Taglians and two stepped forward. The man was heavily muscled - bodyguard type, Tarrant reckoned. The woman was small but she had hard eyes and carried herself with confidence.

They sat down at the table and entwined fingers, right hand to right, and Yestin dropped the sphere into their joined hands. It glowed orange and the black streaks started to slide around inside the crystal. Brighter and brighter, while everyone in the club watched and the couple stared into each other’s eyes with fierce concentration. It went on for several minutes, with no-one speaking, until the sphere was too bright to look at directly. Then the orange flashed into green and slowly dulled.

The woman laughed. The man was still staring, but clearly senseless. She pushed back her chair and spoke to her opponent, who moved awkwardly to his feet and followed her through the catcalling crowd. They disappeared around a curtain, the laughter died away and the room got back to normal. The sphere was slowly dulling again.

Tarrant caught Vila’s eye. The man looked considerably more sober than he had been five minutes ago.

“What happened there?” Tarrant asked the president.

“It’s a battle of mental strength. The loser is compelled to the will of the victor, for a short time. Perfectly harmless. Just a bit of fun.”

“Where did they go?”

Yestin shrugged. “There’s usually a minor forfeit involved. The effect only lasts twenty minutes or so; they’ll be back after that.”

This sleazy party trick was the sort of thing that Avon had been so desperate to warn him against? Tarrant wasn’t a fool; he didn’t intend to challenge Yestin to any sort of contest on the man’s own turf. “Where did you get it? I’ve never seen the like.”

Yestin looked cagey for a moment. “I’ve been around. Picked up things here and there.”

What had Avon said? That Yestin was more than he seemed? “Thank you for the demonstration. I think I’ll see if my friend would like another drink.”

Tarrant needed to talk to Vila in private. He ambled over to the man, who was placing chips as if his life depended on it. “Need another?”

Vila looked up at him, hands closing around the stem of his half full glass. “No.” And, more thoughtfully. “No, but I do need the facilities. Have you any idea where they are?”

They’d been clearly marked near the entrance. Vila couldn’t have missed them. “I’ll show you. Pardon us, ladies. ”

Inside he checked for anyone else then closed the door and leaned against it. “OK. Give. What do you know about that sphere, Vila?”

Vila shuddered. “Too much for comfort.”

“Spill, then. We don’t have much time.”

“Blake told us about them when he was getting his memories back. He insisted that we needed to know everything in case... Well, in case, you know. I didn’t want to think about it. I still don’t.”

"Sphere, Vila, Keep to the point.”

“Right. They were developed at enormous expense and secrecy as a Federation interrogation tool but they didn’t work well.”

“Why not?” The lack of will of the man had seemed pretty effective to Tarrant.

“Because you have to take part voluntarily, or it doesn’t operate. And sometimes the interrogator loses.” Vila managed a half smile. “That bit seemed to amuse Blake. I think maybe they tried it on him. Anyway, the interrogators were trained in using the things so they didn’t often lose, but it was still too risky for the Fed to use routinely. Blake said there were only three or four spheres ever made.”

“So how did an extremely rare and top secret Federation interrogation tool end up as a Taglian rebel leader's plaything?”

“I don’t know,” Vila said. “But I don’t like it. I think we should go back to the ship now.”

“You go back,” Tarrant said. “I want to find out what’s going on.” And off Vila’s look, “You said yourself, I can’t be forced to put my hand on that thing. I’m not going to volunteer to do it. Yestin’s up to something and I’d like to know what. There are three planets here which have chosen him leader. If he’s crooked they ought to be told.”

“You really don’t like him, do you?”

“No,” Tarrant said. “I really don’t. What’s more, he doesn’t like me, which makes all this lavish hospitality extremely suspect. Something is going on. Tell Avon to keep out of this. I’ll handle it.”

Vila narrowed his eyes at Tarrant. “If you take my advice, which of course you won’t, you won’t bait him.”

“I don’t need to bait Yestin. He’ll have to show his hand sooner or later.”

“I was talking about Avon. I’ve known him a long time now, and if he decides that he's better off without you he’ll just take the Liberator and leave you stranded.”

“Oh, I don't think so. I have something he wants.” Tarrant smiled, remembering the taste of the man's fingers.

"Are you sure? Because I don't think even Avon knows what he wants. Minimal complications, that's his style. Don't be a complication would be my advice. "

Tarrant told himself that he really didn't need advice from Vila. No point in wondering if the man was right. "Just give him the message. I'll keep checking in every thirty minutes." 

Yestin took the early departure of one of his guests stoically once he'd ascertained that Tarrant was staying. He even insisted that Vila take his winnings back with him. Vila wasn't the only one to leave. Within half an hour the dancers and the playboys had departed and the small group remaining was settled by the bar, though it looked to Tarrant as if there wasn't much drinking going on any more. The two who had demonstrated the compulsion sphere had rejoined the party. As far as Tarrant could tell neither seemed particularly affected by the experience, though maybe that was precisely what he was meant to think. 

Yestin seemed to be enjoying himself, his focus solely on Tarrant now. He was boasting about various exotic sporting experiences he’d participated in over the last few years. Since the entry criteria seemed to be more about money than ability Tarrant wasn’t nearly as impressed as Yestin thought he ought to be but he listened politely. He was trying to put together some idea of what the man had done before being elected president. Direct questions never seemed to elicit direct answers, he noticed.

The evening wore on. The room emptied further, until only Yestin and a couple of men remained. Tarrant called up to the ship yet again, confirming everything was all right. It was straight after that call that Yestin picked up the sphere, cradling it as something precious. Tarrant waited.

“Would you like to play a game, Del?”

“No, thank you.”

“Nervous?” Yestin grinned at him.

“Uninterested,” Tarrant told him. “Defeating you wouldn’t get me anything that I wanted.”

“We could put a wager on it.”

“I don’t have a great need for money at the moment and I don’t have funds to wager.” Tarrant gestured around the room. “Money, alcohol and sex; you haven’t changed since the Academy. There’s nothing here that you can tempt me with. I’d rather be drinking coffee back on the Liberator than playing your stupid little games.”

Yestin scowled. “I could make you play.”

“No, you couldn’t.” The bracelet was a comforting weight around his wrist. “You really are a tin-pot little dictator, aren’t you, Yestin? God knows what you and your friends will do when the Federation come to claim their planets back.”

“What makes you think,” a familiar voice came from behind him, “that we ever went away?”

She walked past him to take the sphere from Yestin. “Have you had a pleasant evening, Tarrant?” She was wearing a slender, floor length gown in emerald green. She looked beautiful, untouchable and corrupting, and he felt sick.

He struggled for something to say. "Servalan. I did think your friend there made an utterly unconvincing revolutionary. What’s this farce about?” He was unarmed. She wasn’t. The other men had left; there was only the three of them in the room. The game had changed. His bracelet might be no longer enough. Tarrant was briefly and irrationally furious with Avon for pushing him into this by trying to stop him. 

The contents of the sphere swirled as she held it aloft in the hand that wasn’t holding the gun. “I could answer all your questions, Del Tarrant, if you’re strong enough.”

“I’m still not interested.”

“Don’t be a fool, Tarrant,” Her voice was cool. “I could just kill you here and now. But I’d like what’s in your head just as you need to know what I’m up to. Unless you are certain that you’ll lose, you have little choice.”

She stroked the globe and it glowed brighter orange briefly. Yestin made a half hearted grab for it. “But we agreed, Commissioner! We agreed that I would interrogate him! You don’t understand the sphere; it would be extremely risky for you to try. I insist!”

“I suggest that you don’t insist on anything.” Servalan said coldly. “Get your hands off my sphere.”

Yestin looked apoplectic. “My sphere, woman! I am the interrogator and I am the President here. Give it back immediately or you will regret it.”

“I seldom regret anything,” she said, and shot him in the chest.

Tarrant glanced automatically at the doors but Yestin’s men were gone. He looked back down on the corpse. He hadn’t liked the president at all, but his sudden demise was unsettling.

“If that’s how you treat your allies I’m rather glad I’m your enemy.”

“Do try not to be so naive. He was doomed from the moment you used my real name.” She turned away from the body, dismissing it. Her gun was trained back on Tarrant. “Anyway it works out rather conveniently. No-one else knew I was here. The murder of their president by a Liberator rebel will cause chaos, and when it settles the Targian system will be Federation again.”

“You’d better not shoot me then.” He managed a grin. “Two bodies wouldn’t fit your story.”

Servalan frowned at him. “Stupid, Tarrant. Persuading your people to teleport your body up would be trivial. I need only tell them that you might not be quite dead yet.”

She was right. Tarrant had no doubt that his death would be made useful enough for her own ends if he refused the alternative. The sphere swirled orange and black, far more tempting than the silver muzzle of the gun. He had survived all these years by taking chances, and the sphere was a chance, and not even an outside one. Yestin had said that she didn’t know how to use it. All he needed was to distract her long enough to get the gun or to teleport up.

“Are you so sure that you’ll win, Servalan?”

She smiled. “Avon would have been rather more formidable, obviously. It's rather fortunate that Yestin lured you down instead.”

He knew he was being goaded, but still... "You don't know me well enough yet if you think Avon is the strong willed one."

“So now you have the chance to prove it. Your choice, Tarrant. Make it."

He wondered whether to ask her what she would do if he was defeated but decided that would sound like weakness. He would just have to win.

“What do I have to do?”

Servalan settled herself on one end of the chaise longue along the side of the room, and gestured with the gun, a tiny movement that didn’t give Tarrant a second’s opening. “Sit down at the other end. Now catch.”

The globe seemed colder than when he’d picked it up in Yestin’s office.

“Hold it out to me in both hands.”

They were close enough now that he could almost grab the gun. He barely attended to the sphere he was offering up in curved palms. Any second now…

Long fingers curved over the smooth surface, and everything went blank.

 

 

Tarrant was standing in swirling orange fog, the tiny droplets almost frozen on his skin. He spun around; nothing behind him but more of the obscuring mist. The ground was hard and smooth as glass.

He listened; no sound at all. Just him and the bright fog and the dark glass floor. His bracelet was gone.

The last thing he remembered was Servalan touching the sphere. It could have been a second ago, or hours. The mist around him was that exact hue. If this was the contest then it might as well get under way before the cold got to him.

“Hello?” he called. “Anyone? Servalan?”

Nothing. He picked a direction indistinguishable from any other and started walking. For a long time nothing changed, except that he got colder.

Eventually there was something different from the ambient and now strangely uncheerful orange, something dark, snaking towards him at waist height. As it came closer he could see that it was about the thickness of his wrist and obsidian black. A tendril, he thought, questing in his general direction.

He didn’t fancy its touch, so he stepped aside. It went past him a couple of feet then retreated ten feet or so and came back towards him, apparently both blind and determined. Seeking his warmth, maybe. The tendril was relatively slow; he felt he could probably dodge it indefinitely, but he was impatient. The next time he let the tip go past then grabbed the body just below where it flared into its full width.

Ouch! He almost let go. It stung, a sharp pain in his palms that slowly eased off as he kept his grip to a dull nauseating ache. It felt malign as well as painful. The end of the tendril thrashed angrily but seemed incapable of turning back on itself enough to reach him. The tentacle tried to withdraw and he clung on tenaciously despite the pain until it seemed to give up. He could feel emotion seeping into his sore hands; a familiar hostility laced through with frustration. This was Servalan's thing and it was at least partially defeated.

Tarrant started to follow the black tendril back to its source, hand over hand, never letting it loose despite the weakening sting every time he touched it. He could feel a hint of desperation now as he made his way through the mist until he could see her shape a few feet away. The tendril was dead now in his hands. Closer, and she looked wide eyed and lost in the orange fog.

"Del," she said, softly. The still mass of black slipped from her hands onto the ground. Tarrant thought that she looked particularly lovely in defeat. He dropped the dead weight in his hands and stepped forward to claim his victory and a kiss.

Something grabbed him. The electric shock was enough to shred his nerves, leave him limp in the tentacle's grasp. It pinned his arms, tangled his legs, delivered shock after shock before dropping him, twitching and immobile, on the glass floor in front of Servalan.

She smiled. "You claimed your win too easily." she told him. "Avon would have been a great deal more suspicious."

He couldn't find the will to move or speak so he lay silent. She bent down to place a warm palm on his cheek. "You lost," she told him. "You gambled all their lives and you lost, Del Tarrant. Time to pay the price."


	3. Secrets and Lies

"Look at me."

Tarrant turned his head. They were back in the night club. He had no feelings about that or anything else.

"You know who I am."

Of course he did. "Yes "

" Is anyone from Liberator likely to try to make contact with you?"

“If I don’t call in the next few minutes they will call me.”

“Call them now. Say that everything is fine and you don't need their help. Understand?"

"Yes." He did exactly as he was told. Avon’s voice acknowledged without comment.

Servalan balanced a narrow hand in the top of his head, fingers wrapping uncomfortably tight around his curls. "Twenty minutes is not nearly enough. Still, I will have details of all the rebels you've been in touch with, and Liberator; you’ll tell me how she can be defeated. Then you’ll forget that I was even here."

She smiled at him. He felt nothing at all. "You're going to betray all your friends, Del. I think I'm tell them who was responsible, before the end. It won't help any of you escape but it might be fun to watch what Avon will do when he finds out you've given me his precious ship and his even more precious life. "

Tarrant was waiting for instructions. He had heard none yet. 

"Are you frightened of Avon, Del?"

"No."

She frowned at that, as if he'd disappointed her slightly. "Reckless of you. Don't you know that he's a dangerous man?"

"Yes."

"So you're just foolhardy, then?"

"No." He understood that she wanted a reason and therefore he provided it. "I have a safe word."

She blinked, apparently startled. "A safe word? Does that mean what I think it does?"

"I don't know what you think it means."

Her eyes narrowed. "For a start, that you've been sleeping with him?"

"Yes."

Her wrist unit beeped and she sighed. "I'm getting distracted and there's so little time... Work first, entertainment afterwards. When I give the order you will forget seeing me here, Tarrant. You will remember only Yestin having the sphere. You will wake up to find him dead on the floor with a camera in his hand and the gun in yours. You will be naked by then and in handcuffs. It won't be hard to work out what must have happened. Fortunately you will be able to teleport up to Liberator before the locals find out you've murdered their president. And then, with what you’re going to tell me I will take the ship and your friends at my leisure."

He understood every word but he felt nothing. He took off his clothes when instructed. The tunic cloth snagged briefly against his teleport bracelet but it didn't occur to him to call Avon or anyone else for help, and the bracelet was soon taken away from him anyway. He didn't even respond when Servalan touched him, her nails scraping lightly across his groin.

"If I have enough time I might trespass a little on Kerr Avon's domain," she told him. "Maybe when I take Liberator I'll keep you for a while. Would you like that, Tarrant?"

Like meant nothing to him. "I don't know."

She frowned a little at that. "You are rather dull like this. It doesn't matter. Later you'll be defiant and I will enjoy breaking you. All of you."

"I'm sure you would enjoy it enormously. A shame that you're not going to get the chance."

Tarrant didn't look round at the familiar dry voice. Servalan did.

"Put your hands up."

Tarrant watched Servalan lift her white hands to head level. Her voice was calm. "Tarrant. Take the gun on the chair. If Avon doesn't drop his gun in ten seconds or if he discharges it, kill him and then yourself."

He moved to obey, counting seconds in his head. At six Avon's gun hit the nightclub carpet.

"You could have just shot him," Servalan told Avon. "I'm a little surprised at you. Getting sentimental?"

"I need him to tell me what you've been up to. What on earth have you done to him? He's not usually this quiet."

“We’ve been playing with a little toy that I picked up recently. It’s called a compulsion sphere, if that means anything to you.”

“That has a dangerous reputation, Servalan.”

She shrugged. “Not if your opponent is weak. I’m sure we both know this one's weaknesses by now. Tarrant. Give me both guns. There are cuffs on the table; put them on Avon and take his bracelet."

Tarrant approached Avon with the cuffs open. Avon punched him in the nose, hard enough that Tarrant could feel the ends of bone grind against each other at the weak point where the med unit had healed him the day before. He recoiled instinctively and Avon grabbed his right wrist, something - a nail? - digging in sharp against the underside. A gun went off and the table next to them exploded in fragments. Tarrant could feel the blood running down his face but he had no instructions about it so he ignored it.

“Next time it will be your leg.” Servalan said pleasantly. “Hurting him won’t get his wits back any faster, Avon. Behave.”

Avon let go with a curse, held his wrists out to Tarrant without glancing at his face. As Tarrant removed the bracelet he wondered where best to put it so that Avon couldn’t get it back, then realised that he was thinking for himself again. Something in his head had cleared. The compulsion to do only what Servalan told him had gone.

Somehow he had the presence of mind to carry on with what he was doing without trying to catch Avon's eye. The bracelet came off and the first cuff clicked cleanly shut. For the second he tugged a little of Avon’s tunic in between the jaws as it shut. He wasn’t sure whether the cuff had locked firmly or not. He stopped moving, still facing Avon, holding the bracelet, apparently waiting for the next order, actually trying to figure out the best way of getting out of this mess. Servalan still had both guns. 

“Why did you come? The boy here wasn't expecting you.”

“The ‘boy’ thought he had a point to prove to me. I calculated that was almost inevitably going to get him into trouble down here. What happened to his clothes?”

“He’s prettier naked, don’t you think, Avon?”

“Should I have an opinion on the matter?” Avon asked with a fair pretence at uninterest.

Servalan laughed. “Nice try. However Del has been telling tales. Odd. I never had you down as a pervert.”

Avon’s flickered smile was humourless. “You’re the one who took both his clothes and his free will away. How much more ‘playing’ were you intending to do, or have you already done it?”

“Oh Avon.” Tarrant could hear the pout in her voice . “I don’t know which of us you’re jealous of but there’s really no need. I barely touched him. What on earth did you do to him, incidentally, that required a safe word?”

“That's not really any of your business.” Avon said smoothly.

“No? But I'm dying to know. Maybe someone else will tell me. Tarrant. What has Avon being doing to you?”

Tarrant turned, keeping carefully expressionless. Avon’s bracelet was still in his hand. His own was a good four feet away from both him and Servalan, on a side table. “He brings me clothes,” he told Servalan.

“What sort of clothes?”

“Gowns. Underwear. Shoes. Jewellery. He tells me to put them on.”

Servalan raised an eyebrow at Avon, who snorted. “You’re not taken in by this nonsense, I presume. Tarrant’s winding you up.”

“He can’t wind me up,” she said, glancing at her wrist piece. “Not for another thirteen minutes at least. He can’t do anything but tell me the exact truth. Go on, Tarrant. What happens after you dress up?”

Tarrant had no idea. He couldn’t be seen to falter though. What would Servalan like to hear? “He gives me alcohol, sometimes drugs. We sit together and he tells me that I’m beautiful, and kisses me.”

“Very creative,” Avon’s voice was dry. "I'm not sure I understand the purpose of this fiction, however. " Tarrant ignored him. It wasn't difficult. 

“He tells me how and where to touch him, but after a while he becomes angry with me. He starts to push me around, to slap me. Then he beats me with something; his belt or a shoe or anything else to hand. He calls me by your name as he hits me.”

“Shut up!” Avon snarled and was up out of his seat, his chained hands swinging forward to smash into Tarrant’s chest. Tarrant went down, sprawled across the floor, was kicked in the ribs and stomach several times. Avon wasn't holding back at all; not visibly reacting to the savage beating was taking every bit of Tarrant's control. It only stopped when Servalan raised her voice again.

“Avon!”

Avon stepped back again, hissing curses. When Tarrant climbed back to his feet he was standing a bare foot from the second bracelet and Servalan’s attention was entirely on Avon.

“You don’t believe this crap,” the man snarled at her.

“Oh, I believe every word,” she purred. She was stepping forward towards Avon, gun in one hand, the other extended towards his face. If she took one step forward Tarrant would be out of her peripheral vision.

Avon backed up a couple of steps and Servalan followed. Tarrant reached out, the pain in his ribs searing, and scooped up the bracelet. He couldn’t see the second gun so he grabbed the only thing that looked heavy enough to do any good. The orange sphere seemed to slide out of his hands as he tried to throw it. It glanced off the side of Servalan’s skull and she staggered but didn’t fall.

“Catch!” Tarrant tossed the bracelet to Avon, opened the com channel on his own. “Teleport us up now!” He heard the discharge of a weapon as Liberator appeared around him. Beside him Avon was crumpling slowly to the floor of the teleport pad. The sphere rolled across the floor and hit the far wall with an audible thud.

* * * * *

“That was probably the worst rescue mission ever.” Tarrant told the man in the bed. It had taken several days for Avon to come out of the coma induced by the med unit while it replaced blood, skin, muscle and various bits of internal organs fried by the close up weapon discharge. He was now awake, if paler than usual and mostly immobile.

“Negotiating with Taglia was all your idea.” Avon pointed out. “Partying with Yestin was your idea.” He stopped to catch his breath, lying back against the propped up pillow. “Playing chicken with Servalan was definitely your idea. And why didn’t you just kill her while I’d carefully arranged for her back to be turned instead of letting her shoot me?”

“I tried.” Tarrant thought about trying to explain about the sphere’s refusal to co-operate but decided it would look too much like special pleading.

“So what’s happened while I’ve been under?”

Tarrant drew himself up a little straighter. "We- well, I - am being blamed for assassinating Yestin. The council have invited the Federation back in to deal with the crisis. We didn’t hang around to wait for them.”

“So you’ve lost the entire rebel Confederacy to the Feds and severely dented our reputation in this quadrant.” Avon was dry. “Well done.”

“They were never really rebels anyway,” Tarrant pointed out.

“Your friend Yestin wasn’t a rebel. The people who did the actual rebelling were. Presumably the poor sods have all been rounded up by now for Federation reprogramming.”

“Yes, thank you. I feel fairly bad about the whole thing already. You don’t need to rub it in.”

“Getting shot doesn’t tend to improve my temper.” Avon said.

There was silence for a moment.

“At least,” Avon said, rather grudgingly, “you had the sense to send Vila back so I knew about the sphere. If I hadn’t brought the antidote God knows what sort of mess you’d have been in.”

Tarrant grinned. “I’d have told Servalan the truth about us, for a start.”

Avon winced noticeably.

“I’m sure she’d have found it fairly boring,” Tarrant assured him. “My version was much more her sort of thing.”

“Your version was ridiculous. I was sure you’d blown it.” Avon paused, then “Boring?”

“Servalan likes everything to be about her, remember.”

Avon sighed. “I trust that she’s figured out by now that you were lying.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Tarrant was cheerful. “I bet she still believes every word.”

Another sigh, this one more pained. “You should have just told her the truth.”

Tarrant laughed. “Saying ‘Avon likes breaking bones’ was hardly going to keep her attention for long enough for either of us to do anything, is it? Face it, Avon. Your kink’s just not that fascinating.”

“You seemed quite fascinated.”

Tarrant shook his head. He’d had plenty of time to think about this in the long days while Avon lay swathed in gel and the med unit would say nothing but “prognosis uncertain”. There were creases of pain now deepening around Avon's eyes. He had been talking too long.

“By you, idiot. Not by it. The others won’t let me back in here if I keep you up too long.” Tarrant stood up from the chair by the bed. “Cally wants to say a quick hello. I’ll send her in. Then you need to rest.”

Avon said nothing. When Tarrant looked back from the doorway he saw that the man in the bed had already closed his eyes.

* * * * * *

Two days later Avon came back onto the flight deck. He hadn’t expressed any interest in talking again privately to Tarrant while he had been convalescing and Tarrant had thought it wise to leave the subject for a little while. (At least, he thought to himself with rather more hope than expectation, until they might both be capable of actually doing something about any decision they came to.)

Avon glanced at the viewscreen showing the green and blue planet below. “Where are we?”

“Burnhelm Six. The med unit was out of some organics. Patching you up used up rather a lot, apparently. Cally and Dayna are down there shopping.”

“Does Dayna understand the concept of paying for things?” Avon reached his console, and, Tarrant noticed, leaned on it. “We could do without her starting a war.”

“I’m sure she’s quite capable.” Tarrant had had much the same thought himself but Avon needn’t know that.

“A less than overwhelming vote of confidence. You’ve fallen out.”

“Not at all. We are good friends.”

“Ah.” Avon sank down into a seat. “Romance is dead.”

That much was true enough. Tarrant had put the girl off as gently as he knew how but there was still a little awkwardness, one reason why he was on Liberator and she was on planet. He shrugged. “It happens.”

“Where’s Vila?”

“Manning the teleport. They are due back any minute.”

Avon flickered a smile at him. “Good. I certainly didn’t come up here for a tete a tete with you. Zen, I want a full systems check and a summary of the last nine days activity, output to my console. "

_Systems check and activity report underway._

“Not necessary.” Tarrant told him. “Nothing significant has happened and the ship is fine.”

Avon glanced up from his console. “If you want to be useful you could make some coffee. This will take a while.”

It was not, Tarrant told himself, necessarily a deliberate snub. Avon just didn’t trust anyone else with his precious ship. Since it was easier to get coffee than to stay there and keep his temper, he went to get coffee. By the time he returned so had everyone else and the chance of talking to Avon alone had gone.

That was why he ended up knocking quietly on the man’s door late that night. There was a long wait before Avon opened the door, glanced at his face and turned back into the room, leaving the door ajar. Tarrant followed.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked.

“Somewhat less gutshot than I did.”

“I didn’t say thank you,” Tarrant said. And into the lengthening silence. “For coming after me. I really was in trouble down there.”

“Yes you were.”

“So thank you. Things could have gone very badly without you.”

“Things went fairly badly even with me. You were being remarkably stupid that evening.”

“Maybe.” Tarrant found himself a chair.

Avon sat down on the bed. “Undoubtedly.”

Tarrant shrugged. “I suppose I may have made some minor errors of judgement. I was rather annoyed with you.” He wasn't annoyed right now, more interested in the possibilities offered by Avon and a bed. This conversation wasnt really going the right way, despite his best efforts to butter the man up a bit. Avon always had to be difficult. 

"Hardly my fault that your expectations were totally unrealistic.”

Tarrant wasn't having that, butter or not. “Ah yes. That will be the bit where I expected that you might behave like an adult and talk about what had happened. Instead all you did was threaten to hurt me.”

“That’s all there was." Avon's voice was chill. "If you thought any more was included in “what had happened”, you were wrong.”

“No, I don’t buy that. You’re a sadist. I get that. But that doesn't really answer any questions at all. That’s not enough. ”

Avon turned on him, his tone unexpectedly and uncharacteristically savage. “What the hell is the point of this? I am what I am and you evidently can't handle that. Where does all this forensic prying get you?”

“How about to the point where we at least give it a try?'

“We did, remember. You didn't like it. Slunk off to lick your wounds and didn't come back.”

“Yet here I am now." Tarrant tried a grin. " It couldn’t have been a complete failure, could it?”

Avon shook his head. “Your tenacity is only exceeded by your stupidity. You're after something more conventional from me next time. I don’t do that.”

“That’s not fair. Right now I just want to understand a bit better.”

Avon laughed. “Really? If that’s what you want, I think I can oblige. ” He walked over to a cupboard, opened it. Tarrant blinked at the familiar orange glow, taken aback. In the excitement of having Avon just about dying in his arms he had forgotten that the sphere had come aboard.

“What are you doing with that in here? It’s dangerous!”

“As dangerous as the people using it. So yes, dangerous enough.” He picked up the globe, walked back with it. “If you win you can ask as many intrusive and impertinent questions about my sexual proclivities as you like in the knowledge that I can only give you the exact truth. I won’t resent you for it. In fact you could get me to forget the whole session.”

“You really think that sounds like a good idea? I thought that gunshot removed part of your stomach, not your brain"

Avon ignored him. “And if I win I’ll demonstrate some of the answers.”

Tarrant realised that his mouth was open, and closed it, “Avon...”

“Since you won’t have the benefit of a safe word, I will of course undertake to avoid significant pain, discomfort or injury. I will play fair.”

Tarrant remembered the feeling of complete indifference while he was under Servalan’s control. Nothing Avon did would distress him. Not until afterwards. He’d had the odd-not nightmare, precisely. The odd disturbing thought about what she had done, and what she could have done. To hand over that power to Avon, of all people...

He found that he was looking at the man's hands again, “This is crazy.”

“This gets you what you supposedly want, one way or the other.” Avon moved a hand across the sphere and the orange clouds swirled. Even after what Tarrant had gone through, the object was compelling.

“And what about afterwards?”

Avon smiled at him, without a hint of warmth. “If, afterwards, you still want to experiment with a sexual relationship, I will give it a try.”

It was obvious that Avon didn't regard this as likely.

“And the alternative to this... contest?”

“You drop the whole thing and leave me alone.” Avon said. His voice was matter of fact.

Put like that, Tarrant didn’t feel he had a great deal of choice about the matter. It wasn't in his nature to give up and walk away from anything, and certainly not anything like this.

* * * * *

The orange mist was colder than he'd remembered. The ground beneath his feet shuddered and he looked down. He was standing on what looked like a piece of the black tendril, now fourfeet across, flat on top and flexing slightly. On either side of him was nothing but the fog, falling away underneath him for an unguessable distance.

Tarrant had a choice; forward, back or stand still. He walked forward, staying in the middle of the uncertain walkway. The tendril shuddered and he was tempted to drop to his hands and knees but he didn't imagine that Avon would crawl to this contest so he stayed upright.

The mist was deceptive. One second it was empty fog, the next Avon was walking towards him. Tarrant stopped and waited.

"This is different from last time," he told Avon when the man was closer enough.

Avon nodded. "I hardly imagined you'd manage to lose a hand to hand combat against Madam President."

"Is that what we're doing? "

"It appears so." Avon waved a hand at the nothingness on one side, his gaze never shifting from Tarrant's face. "Stand or fall. My guess would be that the sphere uses its telepathic function to pick a scenario appropriate to the combatants. This is it."

"And if we don't fight? "

Avon shrugged. "If we reject this it might provide an alternative or it might keep us trapped in here indefinitely. I see no reason to risk the experiment. This will do."

Tarrant glanced over the edge at the swirling mist below. Falling would be unnerving, to say the least. The shock of Servalan's tendrils had hurt though they had left no marks; no reason not to think that hitting whatever surface lay far beneath would be just as painful as doing so in reality.

Well then. He supposed that he had better not be the one to fall.

On this thought he turned his head back just in time to see Avon rush at him, head low and arms outstretched. Tarrant braced against the impact, kept his feet and pushed back. Avon's hands against his bare arms were shockingly warm in the chill air, his own fingers curled round the other man's leather jerkin, shoving in a way he was sure looked both awkward and desperate. They wrestled for a couple of minutes without either of them losing their footing. Tarrant could hear Avon's breaths come harshly. His own lungs ached. It must be way below freezing point. He'd dressed, minimally, for Avon's bedroom (and possibly bed), not this place.

This should be easy. It wasn't. Somewhere in his varied career Kerr Avon seemed to have picked up enough hand to hand combat skills to counter everything that Tarrant tried. His own lighter build was no advantage in this close-in wrestling and the cold was sapping his muscles.

Time to cheat a little. Tarrant looked away from his opponent, down towards the edge. The side of his neck was exposed to Avon's face; he was pretty sure the man wouldn't overlook that opportunity. Sure enough, Avon bit him, hard. Tarrant let out a cry and staggered down to one knee. As Avon's weight followed him down he rolled over taking Avon with him, the other man hitting the black floor on his side. Tarrant shoved with both feet. A hand grabbed his ankle as Avon was pushed away from him and over the edge. The man was hanging, his legs dangling over the chasm, fingers desperately tight around Tarrant's boot . Tarrant could feel himself slip slightly towards the edge; he spread eagled himself as best he could but Avon was heavy and there was little friction to anchor his own body.

"Sorry," he told Avon, and leaned round to pry the man's thumb loose from the death grip on his ankle. Avon was breathing heavily, flailing upwards, trying to get a grip on anything with his other hand but the tendril’s edge was smoothly curved. Tarrant got the man's thumb free and yanked it back away from the fingers as hard as he could. Avon glared at him, muttered "Cocky bastard", lost his grip and slid inelegantly over the edge.

One second. Two seconds. Thud. Tarrant raised a hand to the excruciating pain in his neck and everything vanished.


	4. Nothing But The Truth

They were back in Avon’s bedroom, both still sitting on the bed. Tarrant dropped the sphere as if it was burning him and it rolled under the table. Avon was watching him; Tarrant could see a bead of sweat rolling down his smooth cheek, under his chin. The perspiration on his own brow was cooling fast. His muscles ached with the effort of the struggle just concluded but the pain in his neck was easing off; the skin was smooth and unbroken.

The sound of impact was still loud in his ears. “Did that hurt?”

“A great deal.”

“Ah. Sorry about that.” He looked a little closer at Avon. “But you’re not in pain now?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s good.” 

Avon didn’t look as blank-eyed as he’d expected, more his usual exasperated self. Maybe it hadn’t worked. “So you have to do what I tell you?”

Avon paused as if checking internally. “That appears to be how it works, yes.”

Tarrant wasn’t sure he believed it. Avon looked so …Avon-like. “Stand on one leg, then.”

Avon stood up, lifted his left leg an inch or so from the carpet.

“Now hop round the room.”

He had to admit, it did look as if it had worked. The sight of Avon hopping was far more ridiculous than he imagined the man would tolerate if he had any choice about it. “OK, sit down again. Can you feel emotion? 

"Now or in general?"

"I'm not falling for that one even if others do, "Tarrant told him. "I've seen your emotions thoroughly engaged. Now." 

"It seems not. I can reason but not bring myself to care. You can ask your questions now."

Tarrant wasn't sure that he wanted to. He was tempted to call the whole thing off, but Avon would know, and would probably, on his recovery, consider it a breach of their agreement. For the first time it occurred to him that Avon might actually prefer an emotionless infodump to negotiating an honest conversation.

So if he wasn't to lose everything he had to ask something. He might as well get straight to the heart of things.

“Do you find me physically attractive?”

“Yes.”

Despite his own experience with the sphere Tarrant had still been expecting Avon to somehow prevaricate. “Oh,” he said. And, “Do you want to have sex with me again?”

“Yes.”

“So why won’t you?”

“You haven’t done enough to deserve it.”

For a moment he thought that Avon was saying that Tarrant wasn’t good enough for him. Then he realised.

“I don’t deserve to be hurt. That’s what you mean.”

“Yes.”

Tarrant twirled on a heel away, thinking, then back again. “Do you always need to hurt someone to get aroused?”

“No.”

“Usually?”

“Often.”

“Why? Why do you like it?”

There was a long pause. Tarrant was about to repeat the question when Avon spoke.

“It is not easy to analyse the reasons for taking pleasure in something. I have identified four factors which are likely to contribute.”

“Go on then,”

“One. Inflicting pain provides an acceptable emotional outlet for dealing with memories of being hurt.

“Two. Since it is difficult to lie about being in pain, a degree of certainty about honesty in the relationship is achieved.

“Three. To the extent that any relationship can be seen as a conflict, inflicting pain rather that suffering it is likely to result in a win.”

“Four. It gives me a way to have sex with people who I find irritating or who have displeased me without having to concede anything.”

Avon stopped, still apparently unperturbed. Tarrant was feeling very perturbed indeed. “Really? That’s what was going on in your head when we... when you screwed me?”

“Some of it consciously, the rest probably unconsciously.”

“Ah.” And, rather pathetically to his own ears, “So you don’t actually like me at all?”

“There are aspects of your personality and behaviour that I don't dislike.” Avon told him.

Tarrant knew he should leave this can of worms well alone but his pride had just taken a rather large hit and he wanted something positive out of the evening. " Name one."

"For someone with next to no masochistic tendencies your willingness to endure pain is impressive. "

He was making a hypnotised man pay him compliments. This really was beneath him. "Another."

"Your motivations are easy to read and manipulate and are seldom inherently inimical. "

Tarrant wasn't sure what that even meant. He needed to stop this now. Questioning Avon under these circumstances was not remotely decent, even if the man had signed up for it. Talking of which... 

“Did you lose this contest deliberately?”

“No.”

That was something anyway. "Would you have sex with me without the broken bones?"

"It's unlikely. "

"But possible?" 

"Yes. But nevertheless unlikely."

"Why unlikely? Because you don't trust me or because you don't like me?"

"Both.”

So that was that. Avon sat there looking - well. Hellishly attractive, to be frank. And apparently completely unobtainable by any normal means. And under the hypnotic thrall of an alien device which would make him do anything that Tarrant desired, and could make him forget it all afterwards... 

Tarrant found that he'd bit the side of his cheek hard enough that he could taste blood. This had been a stupid idea from the first. He should have insisted on access to the antidote that Avon had given him and then he could have finished this thing, woken the man up, and left. Instead he was stuck here; it clearly wasn't safe to leave Avon in this state. 

Two minutes of sitting in silence and he'd changed his mind. Avon surely wouldn't come to any harm alone in here. Less, to be honest, than if Tarrant ended up doing something even more monumentally stupid than he'd done so far. He briefly considered getting Avon to forget the conversation but decided that the man would doubtless assume something much worse than had actually happened. 

"I'm going now," he told the silent figure. "Send me a message so I know you've come out of this OK. If you don't, I'll have to come back to check."

 

Zen’s voice came through as he was undressing in his quarters. 

_Message from Kerr Avon_

“Go on then.” 

_I don’t need you to come back._

That sounded like Avon, right enough. Tarrant didn’t bother sending an acknowledgement. Zen would tell Avon the message had been delivered, if the man asked.

He glanced over to the locked box by his bed where the sphere currently rested. Tomorrow he was going to have to deal with all the issues caused by that orange ball and his own curiosity but tonight he intended just to sleep and to let Avon do the same.

* * * * * 

“Morning!” Tarrant weaved through the small crowd on the flight deck, tossing and catching the sphere in one hand as he went. By the time he’d reached Orac’s glass box everyone was looking at him, which had rather been the idea.

“What are you doing with that?” Vila demanded. 

He put the sphere down on the computer's casing, slid the key into the slot. "Orac. I want information about this object." 

“Take it off there at once!” The familiar irritable voice was even more abrupt than usual. “It is not compatible with my circuit functionality.”

“Can you examine it from a distance?” 

“Of course. As you should know by now, my fields extend past what you inaccurately perceive as my physical form. Remove it to at least one hundred and fifty centimetres distance from my casing at once. At once!” 

Tarrant did what he was told. “Now will you tell me about it?” 

“Only if you format a question precise enough to be answered.” 

Tarrant took no notice of Avon’s sigh behind him. He’d deal with the man later. “Does this device record conversations?” 

A brief pause. “It is not a primary function but I have detected a circuit-equivalent which appears to contain records of events around it.” 

“Can you access it and replay the records?” 

"I refuse to do anything as dangerous as interacting with this device merely for your curiosity. What is the purpose of this request?"

"Good question, Orac. What _is_ the purpose of this request, Tarrant?" Avon had come up to stand by Orac. "I would have thought you'd have had enough playtime with this thing by now." 

"Sorry to bruise your ego but this is nothing to do with you, Avon. Servalan and Yestin discussed their conspiracy in the presence of this device. If we provide evidence of Federation manipulation of the Confederation’s internal affairs then the opposition on Taglia will have a fighting chance of restarting the resistance.”

“You want to go back there?” Vila squawked. “There are Federation troops all over the place and the locals think we killed their President!”

“That’s two good reasons to go back.” Tarrant looked at Avon, whose face was showing nothing. “You don’t think I’m prepared to just leave things in this mess, are you?”

“Are we still talking about the Taglian Confederacy?” His voice was dry.

Tarrant grinned at him. “One thing at a time. Orac. Can you identify all records featuring both Servalan and Yestin and convert them to conventional format?”

“Really! Do I look like an image recorder to you?”

“You look to me like the only computer in existence advanced enough to be capable of extracting selected information from that sphere. Am I right?”

“Your attempts at psychological manipulation are laughably transparent” Orac informed him. “Being a being of pure logic I am incapable of being so manipulated.” 

“But you can do it?”

“Of course I can.” Orac hummed for about thirty seconds. “I have uploaded the required records to the ship’s computer. It is quite capable of acting as a video player. Remove that object to at least three metres from my local field range and leave me alone.”

“Thank you.” Tarrant recovered the key and scooped up the sphere, balancing it on one of the spare consoles that he guessed must be at least twice the requisite distance away. 

“Zen, display the files Orac has just transferred to you, please. Chronological order.”

_Confirmed._

“Wait a moment,” Cally said. “How long are these recordings, Zen?”

_Approximately fifty four point zero three minutes._

“Can we at least get some coffee and breakfast up here first, Tarrant, if we are going to have to watch an hour of Servalan being her usual obnoxious self?” 

“Better still,” Dayna said, “do we really all need to watch them at all? Can’t you view them in the rec room and give us the executive summary later?”

Tarrant shrugged. “If you like.” He glanced at the chess game set out. “I can see you’ve got a great deal on at the moment.” Since they were still orbiting Burnhelm Six, waiting for the last of the organics to be ready for delivery this morning and hadn’t yet discussed their next destination there was very little that anyone on the ship was doing right now. Tarrant was a little disappointed that his rather inspired scheme to expose Servalan was meeting with so little enthusiasm.

He was only alone in the recreation room for a few minutes, however, before Avon came in with two coffees, passed one over without a word and settled down two chairs away from him to watch the screen in silence. 

The conversations between Servalan and Yestin were as damning as Tarrant had hoped. He laughed aloud at the part where Yestin was explaining what a gullible wastrel Liberator’s pilot was. But he stopped the playback with a word as soon as he realised that the recording didn’t end with Yestin’s abrupt death.

“I’d like to see the rest of it,” Avon said.

“We’ve just seen her kill him. What more do we need?” He grinned at Avon. “If you really want to watch me take my clothes off again you have only to ask.”

Avon glanced, seemingly involuntarily, at the door to the rest of the ship. “I’d like to know what information you gave away.”

“Nothing. You interrupted us before she started asking questions.”

“That’s presuming that she didn’t mess with your memory.”

“She didn’t.”

“You can’t be sure. You wouldn’t remember, after all.”

Tarrant was getting exasperated. “How long was it between my call back to the ship and you teleporting in? A minute. Maybe two. She had no time to do anything.”

“What about the time before you called in?”

“Now you’re just being paranoid. Zen, erase all sphere records from after  
Yestin’s death.”

“Cancel that order, Zen. It’s neither paranoia nor, as you clearly suspect, voyeurism. You were under her complete control. Watch this on your own, if you really can’t bear for me to witness it, but watch it and do it now.” Avon stood up to leave.

“Oh, stay if you want, I don’t care.” Tarrant was determined not to appear discomforted. “After all we’ve established that you don’t think I can be trusted.”

He was hoping that might embarrass Avon into leaving anyway but instead the man said “That’s a good point,” and sat down again. “Zen, start playing the records again from where they were last paused.”

It was excruciatingly painful to watch. Tarrant propped his feet up on the chair in front and tried to look unconcerned. To his dismay the sphere had recorded what he had presumed was his purely subjective experience in the mist with the black tendrils. Tarrant glanced sideways to see Avon watching intently as his image on the screen strutted confidently up to the doe-eyed Servalan, was engulfed in the tentacles and shocked into stillness.

“Go on,” Tarrant said, a touch belligerently. “Say it.”

“A commentary is hardly necessary. She appeared to be well aware of your weaknesses. You had very little idea of her strengths. The result was inevitable.” Avon hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen. Servalan was questioning Tarrant now, and then he was undressing. Tarrant didn’t look sideways again, not even when Servalan’s hand touched him. 

“That will do. Stop, Zen.” Avon had just seen himself appear on the screen. 

“See, I told her nothing.” Tarrant said. “Nothing of any importance, anyway. Can we get back to the Taglian situation now?”

“Certainly. It’s currently a disaster. What do you intend to do?”

“Link to their satellites and broadcast the footage world wide.”

Avon shook his head. “You’ll get less than thirty seconds before they are closed down. The Federation is well aware of that particular security risk. Even if you got thirty seconds footage through a snippet that length will be easily written off as a fake.”

Tarrant supposed that Avon probably knew security systems well enough to be reliable. Damn. “So we get a message to the Resistance and they can distribute it.”

“That will be the Resistance which came out in public to form the government when Yestin declared independence? What makes you think there are any of them left outside Federation custody?”

“There has to be someone.” Tarrant said, irritably. “Unless you think all three planets are full of no-one but happy and well adjusted Federation citizens, in which case we might as well leave them alone.”

“That’s the best idea you’ve had so far,” Avon didn’t blink at Tarrant’s glare. “This has more to do with your conscience than any practicality. We could be doing a lot more useful things with our time and Liberator’s resources than trying to restart a thoroughly crushed rebellion. The Confederacy is lost. Servalan won. You’ll have to live with it.”

“I’ll talk to the others. Not everyone is as pessimistic as you.”

Tarrant appeared to be wrong. The others were equally resistant to the idea of going back to Taglia. Cally had the only positive suggestion. “We can circulate the footage among the other independent planets in this quadrant. At least they’ll know what kind of scheming Servalan is up to, and it might get back to the Taglians eventually.”

“And redeem our reputation a little?” Tarrant suggested.

“As dupes of the Federation? We ought rather to keep quiet,” Avon said. 

“So you think we should do nothing at all?”

“Precisely. I can see that you feel remarkably proud of yourself for recovering the evidence but there is nothing useful that we can do with it without damaging our reputation further.” Avon glanced at the blank main screen. “If no-one has anything useful to add I’ll be in my quarters.”

This was intolerable. How often did the man plan to just walk out on him? “Avon!” Tarrant called out sharply to his retreating back. 

Avon stopped without turning. “What now?”

“If you’re not otherwise occupied I believe we have an assignation.”

He did turn then. “I hardly think…”

“I was under the impression that you had given your word,” Tarrant told him.

Avon looked around at the others then back to him. “Very well. I’ll be free in twenty minutes time.”

“I’ll see you then.”

As Avon left, the other three turned to stare at Tarrant. He laughed. “Personal,” he told them. “If you don’t mind.”

Dayna swivelled on a heel and stalked out. Vila shook his head in apparent disbelief and followed. Only Cally was left.

“This is still you two working out your differences, is it?” 

“More or less,” he confirmed. 

“Well, it’s your own affair, I suppose,” she told him. “Try not to kill each other.” 

“We’ve managed to avoid it so far.” No need for Cally to know just how much it had felt a little close run at times.

Twenty minutes. What on earth was he going to say to Avon after that disastrous interrogation? All Tarrant knew for now was that he wasn’t yet prepared to admit that he’d been defeated by any of them; Avon, Servalan or the damned sphere. He picked it up from its resting place, meaning to lock it away again in his quarters, and noticed that it had somehow got heavier and much colder again.


	5. Compromises

“Are you here just to amuse yourself by making this a public exhibition, or do you have a genuine purpose in mind?”

Avon wasn’t moving from the doorway to his quarters this time so Tarrant had to stand in the corridor to reply. “Come on, Avon. You didn’t seriously think we were done yet, after last night? Are you going to let me in?”

“It appears that you take a great deal of dissuading.” Avon moved sideways, unblocking the door. “I would be interested to know where you think you are going with this.”

“Into your bed, hopefully. Or mine, if you prefer. I’m pretty relaxed about venue.” He sat down on the coverlet and patted the space next to him.

Avon shut the door then sat down, Tarrant observed, on the chair furthest away from him. “Were you listening to any of the answers I gave you?”

“Oh yes. Particularly the bit where you told me you found me attractive and wanted sex again. That stuck in the memory quite clearly.” He grinned at Avon. “Shall we?”

Avon considered him for a moment, then got up and walked to a wall cupboard. He brought the box it contained over to Tarrant and dumped the contents upside down onto his lap and over the bed. Some items fell on the floor.

“Take a look and let me know what you think you’d enjoy most.” His voice was calm.

Tarrant stared down at the… things. He didn’t even recognise half of them. Handcuffs, yes, and an assortment of chain and leather bits and pieces. Things clearly designed for inserting somewhere. Metal devices that might do anything. A small box with buttons– some sort of remote control, maybe. A couple of knives; he found he’d drawn a breath inward, was still holding it.

“Now who’s just amusing himself?” He’d aimed for a steady voice and missed by only a little. He pulled the empty box towards him and started to dump everything back into it.

“No? What a shame.” Avon’s voice had acquired a touch of scorn. “Maybe you should have listened a little more carefully.”

This was ridiculous. “Aren’t you prepared to compromise at all to get what you want?”

Avon nodded at the box. “Aren’t you?”

For fuck’s sake! He finished refilling the box, held it out. “Fine. Pick one thing to play with, then.”

Avon frowned. “Are you serious?”

“Why not? One of us has to display a little trust, don’t you think? That’s if you think you can restrain yourself to just one item?”

The man was still watching him, trying maybe to figure out if he really meant it. “That’s not what you came here for.”

“I’m flexible, as long as I get what I want in the end.” He was still holding the box out. “Choose something.” He quite strongly wanted most of its contents well off the agenda.

Avon glanced down at it, seemed to come to a decision. “Plenty of time for that.” A crisp note came into to his voice. “What’s your safe word?”

“Roj Blake, still. Why have you even got all this stuff? I can’t imagine that you get much opportunity to use it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” He took the box out of Tarrant’s hands. “Imagination never seems to be your strong point. Maybe you should practice more.”

“What do you think I ought to be imagining now?” He ran a suggestive eye down Avon’s front, lingered at his groin.

That got a cold look. “Don’t flirt at me. I don’t find it cute.” A pause while Avon put the box on his bedside table and started sorting through the contents. “For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t find anything else about you cute either.”

“You don’t like me. Yes, I know. People usually like me. You must just be unperceptive.”

“Yestin didn’t like you.” Avon appeared to be trying to untangle a pair of handcuffs from a silver chain and some black leather strands.

“Servalan did.”

That got a raised eyebrow. “Your personality appealed to Servalan about as much as it does to me.”

“You both want me though, don’t you?”

“Now you sound like a prostitute, Tarrant. Servalan’s got no shortage of pretty brainless young men. She wouldn’t have given you a second look if you hadn’t suggested that I might be involved.”

That might be one way of interpreting events, Tarrant supposed. God, Avon was vain, though! It ought to be off putting but right at the moment he found it rather appealing. 

"Are we going to just sit here exchanging compliments all day?"

"You'll have to wait while I clear up your mess, again. Some of these items are delicate and difficult to come by. "

" You're the one who turned them upside down over me. Can I help?"

"Certainly not." Deft fingers manoeuvred the metal and leather, pulled then apart. Avon wrapped the chain up carefully in soft cloth and placed it back in the box, rearranged a few other items and then looked up. "Take your clothes off." 

Tarrant started to do as he was told. "Sure you don't want to help with that?" 

"Yes. Be quiet." Avon's study of his body as it was revealed was anything but flirtatious. Tarrant felt a flicker of real anxiety that only seemed to enhance his arousal. He couldn't help wondering just how much pain Avon would feel it necessary to inflict in order to make whatever point he was aiming at. Why on earth were there knives in that box? 

"Who hurt you?" he asked, to break the silence as much as anything. 

Avon looked puzzled. "When?"

"You told me that one of the reasons why you hurt people was to cope with the memories of being hurt. Who hurt you?"

A shake of the head. "You had your chance to interrogate me and a pretty poor job you made of it too. I don't do follow up questions." 

"Not hard to guess, though. You went up against the Federation and lost. They torture rebels, I gather."

"Rebel." Avon snorted. "A very romantic way of putting it. I tried to steal money from my employer. I'd never even met a real rebel until Blake." 

"So it wasn't the Federation interrogators?"

"So I'm not answering your questions. Face the wall."

Tarrant placed his hands up against the smooth white surface. "Do you feel like you're winning yet?" he asked. 

"Stop asking questions." The voice from behind him sounded more amused than irritated. " Don't move."

"Not moving." To distract himself from his rather vulnerable position Tarrant went back to thinking about the sphere recordings. How long would it take to track down the ship? How long after that... 

"Ow! " His back was on fire! He started to turn automatically and Avon's hand slammed into his shoulder, pushing him back against the wall. 

"Don't move, I said." 

"What the fuck?" His skin was stinging raw. He was tempted to shove Avon out of the way but he supposed that he had sort of signed up for this. It wasn't so bad once the first shock was over, particularly if they were going to get to have sex now. "Is that it? "

"Don't be ridiculous." Avon's other hand ran over his damaged skin and he tried not to wince audibly. 

"Am I allowed lubricant in addition to my other item or are we going to do this without?" Avon sounded unbothered by either prospect. 

"By all means use lube," Tarrant told him. "I wouldn't want this to be at all uncomfortable for you." He wondered when his back would stop stinging. He could feel Avon close up against him, apparently naked as well. That was promising; his cock twitched against the wall. 

Avon tugged his hips back a little, kicked the sides of his bare feet some way apart. Tarrant braced himself for expected discomfort, got, to his surprise, a rather careful insertion of what felt like two fingers instead. It took a few seconds for his tension to ease, after which he started to positively enjoy it. 

"Move now,” Avon told him. 

"Like this?" Rocking a little back and forwards. 

"Yes."

He knew there was a good reason why he was so keen on Avon's hands. He wondered what the other one was doing right now, then forgot it in the pleasure of sensation. There was exactly where he wanted it. And again... 

A brief withdrawal elicited a small complaining noise, then something else passed up against him. "Keep going,” For a moment he thought it might still be Avon but it was the wrong texture and (he winced) the wrong shape. It had edges of some sort and it didn't accommodate itself to him at all. 

"Move," Avon said again, sharply this time. 

Tarrant had stopped. "What the hell is that?" 

"This is not a conversation. Move or we're done. "

How uncomfortable could it be? He tried shifting backwards and it hurt but not badly. Forwards hurt a little less. He tried to picture Avon aroused, watching him fuck himself tentatively on whatever the man was holding. Assuming Avon wasn't cheating it had to be the same object that had stung his back. He had a sudden image of one of the items in the box - a multi lashed whip with a rounded leather handle. 

"Harder and faster."

" You say the more romantic things." He put a touch more movement into it, now that he was fairly sure the edges weren't actually sharp enough to cut him. "Ow, by the way."

Avon said nothing for a short while, then, "Would you like to stop? "

That was a trick question if ever he'd heard one, but he'd go with it anyway because the alternative was not stopping. 

"Yes. "

For a few seconds he was left alone. That was nice. He rested his forehead against the cool wall and tried to remember what it was he'd found so attractive about Avon in the first place. 

"Why would someone who takes no pleasure in pain tolerate this?" Avon sounded genuinely curious. Score one for him, Tarrant thought. At least he'd managed to interest the man a little. 

" We're having a conversation now, are we?"

"Evidently. Unless you'll prefer me to just carry on with what I was doing? "

"No, conversation's good." Tarrant told him. "In answer to your question, I'm rather hoping to get some hot sex out of it. In fact after this I'll be fairly annoyed if I don't." 

"How much discomfort is that worth, for you?" 

Tarrant shrugged and it felt like needles in his back. "I don't know. This much. Maybe a bit more. If it starts to feel too gratuitous I'll probably tell you to fuck off." 

There was a sigh. "Regardless of my personal feelings about how irritating you are, how entertaining this is and even with your somewhat idiotic insistence on giving consent, I can't quite justify continuing." 

"You had no scruples last time. "

" Last time you stole my rock and made an attempt on my ship. This time you're just annoying. "

" Well, as to that," Tarrant said. Avon was going to have to know sometime soon. “Zen, update on my instructions please.” 

_Required vessel identified with 96.8 percent certainty. Tight beam encoded message transmitted 13.7 minutes ago. Prospect of this location being identified as originating source within 6 hours, 63.1 percent._

A rough hand on his shoulder yanked him round to face Avon. "What have you done?" 

"It's my reputation at stake," Tarrant told him, " Not just the ship's. I've sent the video to Servalan, of course. With a few ultimata."

Naked and glaring was actually a good look for Avon. “You’ve given away our position to the Federation. And you didn’t think to even mention it?”

“Orac reckoned it would be hours until they got a hope of a fix. I thought I’d bring it up a bit later. Don’t fuss. We’re safe enough. Liberator can outrun anything.”

Avon dropped the whip that he was still holding reversed and reached for his trousers. “Zen, message to the others. Meet on the flight deck immediately.”

“Avon!” Tarrant insisted. “There’s no hurry, really. You’re overreacting.”

“You as well,” Avon told him. “Get up there now.” He tugged on his trousers, seized his jacket and stalked rapidly out of the room.

“Sod you, then.” Tarrant said to the vacant room and did the same, swinging the jacket over his shoulder and cursing again as it brushed a little painfully against his back.


	6. Arguments and Negotiations

“Zen, start long range scans. Continue until ordered otherwise.” Avon came to a halt facing the others. “Thanks to Tarrant, Servalan will shortly know our current position.”

“Not for several hours, actually,” Tarrant pointed out. “This is a ridiculous over-reaction.”

“What did you do?” Dayna demanded.

“He’s been secretly sending messages to the Federation.” Avon said coldly.

“One message.” Tarrant snapped back. “Which I just told you about, so not actually secret at all. And what I’m doing is getting them to back off Taglia.”

“You sent Servalan the video,” Cally said. “When?”

“About fifteen minutes ago. They can’t possibly receive it for hours yet, and then they’d have to trace the source. Orac says four hours minimum.”

“Orac has been wrong before.” Avon said. “We need to get out of here. Are the last supplies on board yet?”

“Half an hour, they say, then we can pick them up.” Cally was looking worried. Unnecessarily so. Tarrant was deeply unimpressed by Avon’s posturing.

“We’ve still got enough time to collect them,” he said. “Four hours minimum. And even if something turns up faster, the long range scan will pick it up. Avon’s overdramatising.”

“Do we have time for you to finish getting dressed?” Vila asked. “Because I think that would reduce the drama level quite a lot and only in a good way.”

Avon had managed to put on his jacket between his room and the flight deck. Tarrant hadn’t bothered; saving their mutual blushes wasn’t high on his agenda. Being stared at was probably not helping him be convincing though. He swung round to shrug his arms into his jacket and heard indrawn breath from at least two people. Damn. He’d forgotten all about his back.

“No,” Dayna said to Vila. “It turns out you were wrong.”

“Yes,” Vila said. “Sorry about that. Can we all pretend we didn’t see that? Because I for one really, really don’t want to know.”

Tarrant thought it was probably a very good moment at which to change the subject. “This message I sent. All it said was that if Fed troops didn’t leave the Taglian Confederacy within a week we’d circulate the video. If they did, we’d destroy it.”

“No.” Avon was frowning at him. “She’d never trust a statement like that. What else did you say?”

“Nothing, really.”

“We can find out. Zen, replay message sent to Servalan.”

“Stop!” Tarrant looked round at the faces. “It’s…a bit private. That’s all.”

“Private?” Dayna’s voice was sharp. “You’re sending private messages now? They used to hang traitors, didn’t they?”

“Not that sort of private.” He sighed, admitting defeat. “Watch it then, if you must.”

The flirtatious tone that had seemed quite amusing when he’d recorded it was predictably excruciating to watch in the presence of four unimpressed shipmates. He wished he’d spent a little less time talking about nakedness.

"There, "he told them as it finished. " Exactly as I said."

"What is going on with you?" Dayna demanded. "Is there anyone you aren't taking your clothes off for? First Avon, now Servalan? You can't even stick to one gender for more than five minutes."

"Technically the other way round." he countered.

"Technically," Avon said, "that way round. Then reversed again. I can see that you might be considered a little over enthusiastic with the full nudity at the moment."

He could do without Avon's helpful interference. "Do you really want to tell them everything that we've been up to?"

"Please don't." Vila shuddered. "This is all quite disturbing. Can we stick to the slightly less scary bit? How long until we get blown up?"

"Zen. How long until Servalan receives the message?” Avon asked.

_Approximately twenty minutes._

'That soon? How far away is her ship?'

_Approximately thirty million spacials._

"That's virtually in the next solar system!" Cally said.

"We've still got time to pick up the organics." Tarrant said, reasonably. "They could be ready any time now. I'd rather like the med unit to be running at full capacity." He gave Avon a significant look, which was not acknowledged, let alone returned.

"Servalan's far too close to be down to chance and we've been delayed here. That might not be coincidence. No-one is to go down to the surface again for any reason. We need to get out of here now."

"I second that," Vila said, predictably enough. Tarrant was getting exasperated.

"Check with the surface whether the goods are ready, Dayna. If they are it will take less than five minutes to go down and teleport then up. Zen's got nothing on scan. Thirty million spacials is plenty of breathing space, especially for Liberator. We don't all need to get hysterical about pursuit. "

"You were completely wrong about where she was and when she'd get your little billet doux, Tarrant. I'm not inclined to take your advice after the danger you've put us in." Avon said.

"Thirty million spacials is not danger!" Tarrant insisted. "Back when I was freelance we wouldn't have bothered powering the engines up for anything closer than three hundred thousand."

"Back when you were freelance you were a complete irrelevance to the Federation and to us. Liberator would have done far better if you'd stayed that way. Zen, plot us a fast escape course to the nearest place where we can lose all pursuit."

_Acknowledged. Plotting course._

"I can't decide," Tarrant said to Avon," whether this is utter cowardice or just an attempt to try to make me look bad. Either way it's pathetic." 

"You... " Avon started, just as Cally interrupted.

"Stop it, both of you! If you could rein in the testosterone long enough for someone else to get a word in? Avon. Do you seriously think that teleporting down is dangerous?"

"Self evidently. We've been in orbit for several days; long enough for someone to get a message to the Feds even before Tarrant's bit of self indulgent idiocy, which explains why Servalan is this close already. If whoever sent that message is tasked with delaying our pick up until she arrives they are waiting for us down there and certainly dangerous."

"You've got no evidence for any of that," Tarrant said.

"I've got Servalan within thirty million spacials when the odds suggest she should be half a quadrant away from us by now. That’s evidence enough for anyone who’s not completely reckless. But then you are reckless, aren’t you? I’ve certainly seen enough of that.”

“I was trying to liberate Taglia. Something you had no interest in doing, but then when did you give a damn about anything but your own hide?”

“Your memory’s very short. I was almost killed coming after you. That’s something I certainly won’t be repeating. I want you off Liberator. You’re nothing but a liability.” Avon was coldly furious. Tarrant on the other hand was hot with indignation.

“It’s not your damn ship!” He looked around at the others, read enough in their faces to know he wasn’t winning. “Indulge his paranoia then. We’ll run away, leave what we need and what we’ve spent all this time negotiating for because Servalan’s thirty fucking million spacials away and Kerr Avon’s lost his nerve. And when the Feds walk out of Taglia just remember I did it without you because I know who calls the shots round here and he’s a gutless coward!”

He drew a breath. “You don’t need a pilot to run away. You can do this one without me,” and he walked off the bridge to absolute silence.

As he walked through the corridors he could feel the acceleration. Avon really wasn’t hanging around. Tarrant sat in his quarters and threw things at the wall for a while. None of them broke, which annoyed him even further, until he remembered that he still had the sphere.

By the time a knock came the rare and powerful artefact was in dangerous looking splinters all over his sitting room and he was feeling a little better. "Who is it?"

"Cally"

He got up to open the door to her. “Everything all right with the ship?”

"Liberator's fine. Her crew, on the other hand..." She came in, glanced at the mess on the floor. "Supposing that Avon was right?"

He didn't grace that with a reply. She frowned at him. "Supposing,for a minute, that he was right. If you hadn't sent that message we'd never have known that Servalan was that close. We could have been trapped on Burnheim."

"Do I get a medal, then?"

"You should have told us what you were doing. That's the way it works."

He snorted. "Did Blake always tell you what he was doing?"

"No, " she admitted. " But when he didn't it usually got us into serious trouble. And Blake ... Well, Avon and Blake ... " She tailed off.

" Avon and Blake?" He prompted, intrigued. She shook her head.

"You're not Roj Blake, Tarrant. I thought you and Avon had come to some sort of understanding about this."

"I think we understand each other very well. We just don't like each other that much."

"What did Avon do to your back?" she asked with that characteristic directness that still managed to surprise him.

"He hit it with a whip. It turns out that he has an extensive collection of things to hurt people with. You should ask him to show you, sometime. It's very educational."

"Why did you let him?"

He'd been asking himself the same thing. "That's a good question. When I figure out the answer I might let you know."

"Come back to the flight deck. We want you there."

"Does that 'we' include everybody? Or indeed anyone but you?"

"You're our pilot, Del. Avon doesn't really want you gone."

"I know what Avon wants," he told her. "But he doesn't want to want it. You might do better talking to him. He's the unreasonable one."

"That's not quite the way it looks from here," she said, severely. “Can't you just apologise for sending that message behind his back?"

"If that were actually his problem, I might think about it."

"Think about it anyway." She stood up to leave. "Your personal stuff with him is leaking all over the ship. It’s not particularly entertaining for your reluctant audience. Things were never this bad with Blake, even when they used to argue all the time. I'll tell him that as well."

“I’m sorry,” he told her because he genuinely was, about that part at least. “I’ll try and keep things more discreet.”

“That would be a start.” She nodded at him and left.

It was barely noon, ship’s time. “Zen,” Tarrant said, “Get my rooms cleaned up.”

_Acknowledged._

Tarrant watched the little cleaner robots whizz around removing every tiny piece of fragmented glass. So much for the sphere. He felt momentarily bereft, remembering the attraction he’d first felt to it in Yestin’s office. He would have been better off breaking it there and then. It had brought nothing but trouble.

There wasn’t much appeal in hanging around in his rooms any longer. The ship was still going at near its maximum capacity; they must be a long way from Burnheim Six and Servalan by now. Zen would tell him exactly how fast Liberator was going, where they were and where they were headed, if he asked. He couldn’t think of any reason to care.

Cally was going to talk to Avon. He doubted that it would help much. Avon was as stubborn as they came. For himself, nothing much had changed. He still wanted Avon with a ridiculously passionate intensity that didn’t seem to be quelled by any quantity of violence of actions or words, but he had enough pride to make his next move impossible to figure out.

“Zen. Where’s Kerr Avon?”

_Kerr Avon is in his quarters._

“Is he alone?”

_No. Cally is also in Kerr Avon’s quarters._

“Tell me when she leaves.”

_Acknowledged._

He took his jacket off and mirrored the viewscreen to take a look at his back. The skin wasn’t broken, and the raised red lines were already fading. He reckoned it would barely show by tomorrow. No broken bones, this time.

Tarrant thought about that for a while, about Avon’s delight in hurting him that first time and about the man’s reluctance to hit him twice this morning. He was still thinking when Zen announced _Cally has left Kerr Avon’s quarters._

“Is Avon still there?”

_Affirmative._

Right. He left the jacket where it was and walked the couple of corridors to Avon’s rooms barechested.

Avon looked at him without expression. “I have nothing more to say to you. Go away”

“Ah, but I have several things to say to you. I will, if necessary, shout them through the closed door, but we have just been asked to be a little less ostentatious so I’d prefer it if you let me in.”

Avon moved reluctantly aside and Tarrant went back to the bed he’d been sitting on earlier.

“What, then?”

“Do you think Servalan will pull out of Taglia?”

Avon looked briefly surprised. “She might just call our bluff. You told her that I didn’t want the video publicised.”

“Of course I did. If she believed that we’d broadcast it anyway she would have no reason to comply.”

“Well then, I suppose it depends on which one of us she thinks is in charge here. I imagine that would be me, in which case she might think she’s safe.”

“Would you broadcast it, if she doesn’t pull out?”

Avon frowned. “I’d have to, now. I can’t have her thinking we’re weak.”

“She knows that. That’s why she’ll pull out of Taglia regardless of which of us she thinks is running the show. That’s why I sent the message. I didn’t tell you because I needed to force your hand and thus hers.”

Avon considered him for a moment. “I think,” he said slowly, “that you’ve only just thought of that bit of post hoc justification. You didn’t tell me because you wanted your own way, as usual.”

“It comes to the same thing in the end,”

“Does it?” Avon was leaning against the wall by the door. “Are you finished?”

“Not even close. Have we run away far enough for you yet?”

“I take risks,” Avon told him, “when the rewards are high enough. A handful of organics that we could pick up from a dozen planets is not worth any risk at all.”

“You took a risk to come down to Taglia after me. Was that reward high enough, then?”

“No. It was a mistake.”

“That’s harsh,” Tarrant said cheerfully. “Not that I believe you. Can I see the whip?”

“Why?”

“I didn’t get a look at it earlier. I’d like to see. I’m sure there’s etiquette for these things but I don’t know it.”

Avon sighed, went over to the wall cupboard. “Here.”

It had obviously been cleaned up. Tarrant ran his fingers through the long leather strands. It looked brand new to him. “Have you used this with anyone else?”

“No.”

“Ah. You didn’t by any chance acquire it with me in mind?”

“As it happens, yes.” Avon’s face didn’t twitch.

“How thoughtful.”

The knowledge that he had been in Avon’s mind did actually make Tarrant happy. He tossed it back to the man. “We’re overthinking this.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Too much worrying about motives. Too much information. Too much communication in general. And in your case far too many scruples.”

“You should be thankful for the scruples,” Avon’s voice had turned a little darker.

“Well I’m not. They seem to be getting in the way of what I want.” He nodded at the whip. “Use it.”

“You won’t like it.”

“What is the point of my having a safe word if you won’t put me in a position where I might need it?” He stepped up to Avon, lowered his voice. “I don’t give a damn about your reasons for any of this, Avon. I don’t believe half of the ones you gave me anyway. I don’t want to understand you any better. I want you to do what it takes to get you hard and then I want you to fuck me, and if I have to crawl off to the med unit afterwards then that’s what I’ll do.”

Avon looked back at him. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“I don’t care. I can always make you stop, after all. Can’t I?” He turned to the wall.

“You’re assuming that I want to.”

Tarrant turned back. “Damn right I am. We ought to do more assuming and less interrogating.”

“That’s not the way I do things.”

“An hour ago you would have been glad of the opportunity to hurt me. Now all you can do is talk yourself out of it again. God knows how you ever got it off with anyone. Or is your box full of unused toys? I imagine you need a certain amount of nerve to be a successful sadist. Maybe you don’t have it.”

That raised a flicker in Avon’s eyes. “All right. Turn round again.”

Tarrant braced himself against the wall and waited. The strokes were steady and agonising. After the sixth Tarrant’s legs gave way and he slid to the floor. “Enough!” he gasped. “Christ, that’s enough!”

He blinked the tears out of his eyes and looked up at Avon. There was no sympathy in those eyes, just heat.

“Enough?” he said again, this time a question.

“It will do.” Avon dropped the whip, reached for the lubricant. “Bed.”

Tarrant lay sprawled face down on the coverlet, hissing against the pulsing pain as Avon removed the rest of his clothes with far more brusqueness than care. He craned his head round to see Avon undressing. He was breathing faster now in anticipation as well as discomfort.

“On your knees,” Avon told him, and took him from behind with no further attempt at conversation. Tarrant rested his forehead on his folded arms and just let all the various sensations assault him. It was raw and visceral and bloody hot sex. His eyes were streaming again but his lips were bared in a grin. Above him Avon was panting what were probably obscenities, just too low to make out. Nails ripped down Tarrant’s back and he convulsed in pain as Avon held still for several seconds then pulled away.

Tarrant collapsed flat onto the bed, still face down. “Christ,” he said, his voice muffled. “I think I forgot my safeword.”

“Idiot,” Avon said, still breathing heavily as he moved down to lie next to Tarrant. “Are you all right?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

Tarrant rolled onto his side facing Avon. The pain wasn’t too bad that way. “On whether I can get you to kiss it better.”

He almost caught a genuine smile there; Avon looking relaxed, for once. “Where do you need kissing, then?”

“Just start wherever you like and I’ll let you know when you’ve covered it.”

Avon’s mouth was rough, with a hint of possessive, Tarrant thought, and found that he liked that idea more than he would have previously imagined. He made appropriate moaning noises, interspersed with rather less voluntary hisses of pain as his back got jolted.

After a couple of minutes Avon climbed off the bed without warning.

“Where are you going?” Tarrant asked in some dismay.

“Here.” From another cupboard Avon extracted a small spray bottle. “Sit up.” The liquid was cold and instantly numbing.

“Can you lie on your back now?”

Tarrant tried. “Apparently so. What’s in that stuff?”

“It’s from Liberator’s original supplies. I’ve never managed a decent analysis; it’s thoroughly alien.” Avon settled across his thighs, reached down. “How’s this?”

“Oh God, yes.”

Avon looked down on him, hand still moving. “Don’t ever send messages from this ship again without consulting me.”

“You?” Tarrant asked, with what he thought was impressive focus given the sensations, “Or the rest of the crew? I thought we were a democracy.”

“Me,” Avon told him. “If the others want to come to their own understanding with you, that’s their affair.”

“Not this sort of understanding, they can’t. I’m not satisfying everyone’s kinks.”

Avon almost smiled again. “Just mine.”

“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” Tarrant said happily. “Or functionally equivalent activity, anyway.” With naked Avon stroking him to what was clearly going to be a mind melting climax he felt unexpectedly great. “You have good fingernails for scratching. You’re a bit of a bastard but I like your hands. I broke the sphere. It was beautiful and I broke it, but it was bad. It was bad, wasn’t it? Like Servalan and her hands. Don’t stop touching me, Avon. I like that so much,” He thought he might be rambling, but he couldn’t bring himself to shut up. “Don’t stop. Let’s not stop.” 

Avon did stop, but only after he’d wrung a final loud and satisfying shout out of the man underneath him. 

“Oh God,” Tarrant panted, still twitching. “That was incredible. How was that so incredible? What on earth did you do?”

"I can’t take all the credit,” Avon said. “You're high as a kite.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Definitely.” 

Tarrant thought that maybe he was right. He certainly felt very strange. "Oh shit. Is it the alien spray?" 

“Just your own internal chemistry, with a bit of help from me. Pain and arousal; some people react that way.” He laughed, short and surprised. 

“What’s so funny?”

“You are. I could make a masochist of you yet, Del Tarrant."

“Oh.” He thought about that for a moment, struggling to focus on the idea. “Wouldn't that spoil it  
for you?”

“I think I could live with it.” Avon’s smile was unambiguous this time.

“OK.” Tarrant said, happily, his head still swimming. “Do whatever you like.” Then as an afterthought. “Only in bed, mind. You don't get Liberator just because I want you like crazy.”

“Nor do you,” Avon told him. “Pull a stunt like that message again and you’ll lose more than a bit of skin. Talking of which, you need to get to the med unit.”

“I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt.” Tarrant didn’t feel like moving. “I’ll just sleep for a bit first.”

“Do that and you’ll wake up stuck to the sheets, and they’re my sheets. Go on, get out. It’s barely mid afternoon; we need to decide what we’re doing next. I’ll see you on the flight deck when you’ve finished with the med unit.“

Tarrant moved, reluctantly. “What about tonight?”

“Tonight?” Avon was frowning again. “I’m hardly going to want sex that often.”

“Sleep with me a few times and you might change your mind about that,” Tarrant told him. “I’m told that I’m very addictive.” His head was clearing now as he collected up his clothes. 

“Get out,” Avon said, without any particular heat. “I’ve certainly had enough of your company for now.”

“You like me really,” 

“You’re a reckless egotistical fantasist, and no, I don’t.” Avon called after him as he strode away from the man’s door. Tarrant just grinned, and walked a little faster.

The End


End file.
